


You Bring The Fire (I'll Bring The Rain)

by HerbertBest



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Adulthood, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attachment Difficulties, Babies, Communication Failure, Confrontations, Friendship, Healing, Kid Fic, Loss of Identity, M/M, Panic Attacks, Postpartum Depression, Reclamation of Identity, Singing, emotional breakdowns, parenting, relationship troubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: Dan struggles with his newfound parental responsibilities and a loss of self.  When Arin is less helpful than Dan needs him to be, his emotions build to a crisis point.  Can they salvage their relationship before it's too late?





	You Bring The Fire (I'll Bring The Rain)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> This is a part of Theseus' Asparagus-verse, which includes the fics [Asparagus](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10834572) and [Cephalothorax](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11563167). This is a direct sequel to the latter.

The baby’s cries pulled him up from the dark and deep sleep, as if he’d been raised by chains from the gloom and nothing of nonexistence. The fog pulled away from the shores of his brain, and he rubbed the back of his neck, wincing as it cricked. 

“Willa,” he sing songed, squirming toward the edge of the bed and carefully reaching into the crib, picking up his tiny daughter. She squalled and hit his fist, a tiny storm with Arin’s mouth and his nose. 

“Oof, sweetie,” he mumbled, pulling her close to him, letting her rest her head on his bare chest. Dan winced as he got his arm around her back and his hand grazed a sopping wet diaper. Had he been unconscious for so long? He’d felt Arin leave the bed hours ago, his senses still razor-sharp from his daughter’s recent birth, ready to rise at her every scream. The simple fact of the matter was that Dan had barely been sleeping at all; and he hadn’t been eating much either. The doctors told him to be careful –take it slow, sit back, relax. But his stomach turned into a field of stone every time he heard Willow’s cries falter. What if something was wrong? What if he’d fucked up? 

And yet he looked at her and felt some mild distance. Some fear. As if the mildly traumatic birth she’d survived had somehow put a tiny wall between them. His emotions were a conflicting mess.

Softly, almost to himself, he started to sing

_”Numi, numi, yaldati, Numi, numi nim.  
Numi, numi, k’tanati, Numi, numi nim.”_

To his amazement, she started to laugh into his shoulder. Shifting her upward until he could see her face, he saw nothing but merriment reflecting back at him. Only his daughter would laugh her butt off in a soaked diaper. “Willow Amy Avidan-Hanson,” he said, holding her out at a distance. “Are you laughing?”

A little giggle pealed from her lips, and Dan grinned right back. He tucked his head close to his chest and walked to the changing table, where he dried her off and changed her diaper, then dressed her in a onesie. This was Dan at his best, these days, surviving a morning blessedly free of numbness and confusion. He still didn’t understand her. Still didn’t know what kind of person she was going to be.

Still, when he put her in her crib, he felt lost. The day had barely begun outside, photographic grey, when he made himself a cup of tea and tried to force himself to live.

 

**** 

“No, Danny, we’re not going to do a song called ‘You Broke My Heart Like Our Baby Broke My Tailbone.”

Dan’s smile was a hair sharp. “Too much?”

“I’m sure she didn’t break your tailbone,” Brian said. 

“Sorry, mister alpha. Did you have your stomach cut open by a surgeon with a very sharp knife?”

“No.” Brian crossed out a title. “Help me write something about breasts.”

“I’m Glad I Didn’t Grow Tits For You, Baby.”

“Please stop.”

Dan grinned. After years of Brian needling him, it was fun to finally needle him back. He sipped his soda and sat back with a happy sigh. Willow sat beside him, making little fists and kicking away – when he glanced back Brian was watching her with big, kind, openly-affectionate eyes. 

Dan played with the edge of Willow’s little foot. She watched the patterns of light reflect against the restaurant’s windows, fascinated as a stoner with patterns, shapes and colors. “She’s really pretty, isn’t she?” Dan asked.

“Oh, definitely. You’re reading to her every night, aren’t you?”

“I try to,” Dan said. The honest answer was that he did it whenever he could, whenever he had the energy to do so. Was that already warping her tiny brain? Had he hurt her somehow by failing to contribute to her development. His heart raced. He reached for his tea with shaking fingers and took a gulp.

“So how does it feel to be off bed rest?” 

“Like heaven.”

“And is Arin picking up the slack like he said he would.”

Dan made a face. “He’s totally trying,” Dan said with a shrug. Arin was good with Willa when it was time to sing to her, or when she needed to be walked or rocked. But changing diapers, walking her when she was screaming…all of that seemed to fall to Dan.

He was exhausted most of the time because of that. Utterly, bone-deep exhausted. Which might explain why he looked at his daughter and saw a sweet little girl but only felt flashes of deep attachment.

What was wrong? What missing puzzle piece was gaping in the scheme of his life to make things so difficult?

As if she were trying to give him an answer, Willa started to scream. 

Dan sighed and picked her up. She wasn’t feverish, she wasn’t wet or smelly; when she tried to suck at his fingertip two and two became four. 

“Do you think they’d warm this up for me?” he asked, holding out a bottle of fresh formula. Willow screamed until he gently pushed a nuckie between her lips. She sucked contentedly but there was resentment in her dark eyes. “Don’t hate me, I’m your dad!” he said, warmth and fear warring in his heart.

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you. And sure,” Brian said, and flagged down a waitress. 

The rest of the meal was passed with knot jokes. They came up with a libretto. Maybe they’d write that rock opera yet. 

***

“Honey, I’m home!”

Dan’s exhausted eyes trained upon the door as Arin burst in grinning, an armful of heather blossoms for him. He kissed Dan’s forehead and took in Willa’s distorted features, picking up the girl and rocking him against her. “Geez, is your daddy stabbing you with hot pokers?”

“No,” Dan said flatly. “Though I feel like I sat down on one.”

“Woah,” Arin said, gently bobbing along with Willow, who’d stopped sobbing to stare up at her father with enormous round eyes. “TMI, baby.”

“Sorry. Hemorrhoids are a thing,” he replied. “She’s been pretty good today. I took her to the studio and showed her around, and Brian and I wrote a couple of scratch tracks for the next album.”

“Good,” he smiled. “She’s got your lungs. Hey, maybe someday we’ll get her singing lessons…”

“Don’t start,” Dan teased. “You’ll start talking about me giving birth to a legacy of opera singers.”

“Why not – the Avidan and Hanson opera company.” Willa yawned and burrowed into his grip, and Arin gave her an utterly heartbreakingly sweet smile. “You’ll beat the pants off of Jeremy in every single school musical…”

“Arin…” Dan felt crestfallen. He hated it when Arin brought up Suzy’s kids when they two of them were talking about Willow. It made everything into some kind of terrible blood match between the two of them and Barry and Suzy. Dan was still deeply fond of Scuze and his ex-roommate; Arin’s bragging about Dan’s shifting body had been uncomfortable. All he’d wanted was to hide; he didn’t want to think of his own pregnancy, his own rounding belly, the fact of his oppressive omega existence. He’d felt as if he’d been trapped by his biology, as thoroughly imprisoned by it as he was by his weird thumbs and his lack of sweat glands and his knock knees. 

“Dan?” Arin patted his shoulder. “The baby took a dump.”

“Oh…” Arin held out their smelly daughter, who kicked peacefully at him, unperturbed by the load in her pants. “Why don’t you change her?”

“Isn’t that something omegas do?” Dan narrowed his eyes and Arin cracked a grin. “Okay, I’ll give her her bottle and walk her til she sleeps.” He took the baby back and kissed Dan’s neck. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s take a nice, hot bubble bath after we put her down. I’ll wash your hair,” he added happily. 

“That…actually sounds really good.” Dan knew he had to be ripe, malfunctioning sweat glands or not. HE hadn’t had a shower for…shit, a couple of weeks was it?

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Arin said. Then, the total fucking goober that he was, he actually did a cha-cha slide with Willow in his arms as he headed up to her nursery. 

Dan felt unfrozen. This was why he stayed. This golden, lovely simple beauty that wrapped around his heart whenever he saw Arin’s face, felt his arms around him, and saw the open look of happiness in his face.

It made the raw fingers and the fear in his heart all worthwhile, and the bird flapping wildly in his stomach came to a standstill.

*** 

He drew them an orange-scented bubble bath and was soaked up to his neck in bubbles when Arin scared the shit out of him by kissing the crown of his head. 

“How are you feeling.”

Dan smiled as Arin peeled off his robe and climbed into the tub, placing his phone on the nearby windowsill, Willow’s baby monitor feed cracking through the wireless hookup. “Fine,” he said with a shrug.

“I’ve been worried about you,” Arin said, and Dan automatically snuggled bonelessly into his grip. “You’ve been really distant lately. I know it must be weird, suddenly being a mom-dad…”

“Don’t call me that,” Dan said, yawning as Arin gently poured water over his curly hair.

“…But sometimes I watch you watch Wills and…it’s totally like you’re thinking of something else. You’ve been tired enough to make me worry….”

“We’re writing two albums and we’re planning a tour,” Dan said. “That’d make anybody tired.”

“Which is why we should slow down a little, enjoy the baby. I could always get a nanny…”

“No nannies,” Dan said sharply.

“What’s wrong with a nanny?” he asked, massaging Dan’s shoulders, causing the tension in his backbone to gently dissipate. “They’re useful. And kind. And they could teach the baby languages.”

“I could always teach her French someday,” Dan said.

“Arin. Our genes aren’t…genius genes.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what I mean,” Dan sighed. Everything was getting comfortably soft and fuzzy, nigh on pastoral. “God, I love you.”

“That’s only because your instincts recognize superior alpha logic.” He said, flatly, sarcastically, just to make Dan honk himself silly with laughter. “Daniel! Don’t laugh at your alpha! I know what you need,” Arin said, flexing his arm. “I’ve got those gold-plated genes, and all.”

Dan felt up his stocky muscle and whistled appreciatively. “Are you gonna carry me off to your cave?”

They swam in the marble basin, and Dan felt the brush of warm bristly mustache against his upper lip. “Ooga booga,” he said, and pressed their mouths together. 

 

***  
Willa wouldn’t stop screaming the next morning. Dan and Arin worriedly checked her for a fever, for gas, for a full diaper.

“Numi numi,” Dan sang in her ear as she shrieked, as if he were searching for the missing part of his heart.

He was the one who plunged his index finger in her mouth and felt around. “It’s a tooth,” Dan finally realized, feeling a red, rising mouth in her open, screaming mouth.

They bounced her between them, but he noticed that Arin took frequent breaks to head out of the room and guide business at the office. The final time he donned his leather jacket. “I’ve got to go to the studio,” Arin grumbled. “They need me to re-loop my lines for that Adventure Time episode….”

Dan bounced Willa in his arms. “But can’t you go in tomorrow?” She sucked on a frozen teething ring grabbed up from a congratulatory basket, red-faced, angry at the whole world. Dan had never known that feeling before, but looking down into her prosaically sad face, he could easily relate.

Arin shook his head. “They’re giving the scratch tracks to the art department tomorrow. Sorry baby.” He kissed Willa’s hot head. “I’ll text you, okay? I love you guys! I love you, Wills!” he said, and kissed his daughter one more time before leaving Dan alone in the kitchen.

Wills’ eyes filled with tears; she waved her hand in Arin’s retreating direction, and when his car started she threw back her head and let out a wail.

Dan bounced her gently, working from foot to foot, trying not to lose his mind and panic. “Numi numi,” he sang, sounding eerily out of control. “Numi numi…” the words were turning discordant, harsh. He grabbed his cell phone and pressed it to his ear, calling Willa’s doctor. The attending brushed him off – told him to go buy some teething gel for her. If Willow’s fever got high he’d have to take her to the ER, but for now the only cure for her extreme pain lay in the aisle of the nearest drugstore.

He bundled Willow up in a blanket and carried her out, running, buckling her with shaking fingers into the car. He must have sped to the store; when he parked beside the giant two-leveled boat of the local Target he barely remembered passing through the four stoplights that stood between the two locations. 

Willow screeched the entire time as he zombie shuffled up the aisle. The cheerful voice in the back of his head demanded he keep going. Three more steps and he could finally go home. Ten more to the line and he could go home and work on that new demo. Four minutes in the car and he could have sushi. Just a little more, just four more inches.

“Hey Dan!”

He whirled around, wide-eyed with the gel in his hand, and saw Suzy standing there, one baby strapped to her back and the other in a carrier in her right hand.

And she looked good. She was clean and well-polished. She had brushed her teeth and combed her hair. Her sweats were spangled with skulls. And Dan knew – without a doubt, without a single question left in his mind – that Barry was somewhere else in the store. “Oh my gosh!” She bent to peer into Willow’s carrier and frowned. “I could hear her screaming all the way in the other aisle. Is she sick?”

“No,” Dan said. “Just teething. The doctor told me to put this stuff on her gums and she’d feel better.” He felt so small in his sweatsuit, tucked high over his curls. 

“Aww, poor sweetie,” she mumbled. “Do you feel bad?” her eyes trained. “She has your eyes,” Suzy said, and there was a note of bittersweet resignation in her voice. Dan’s throat clenched. He met her sweet smile and forced himself to give back a parody of one himself. 

“Hey,” she said softly, “I know Arin’s being a little bit….”

“If you say weird I’m going to get mad,” Dan warned her.

“He’s still angry with me. He’s always going to be angry with me. But there’s no reason why I can’t help you and help Willow.” 

“I’d…I’d like that,” Dan admitted. Why not? Arin was on the other side of LA – which might very well have been as accessible as the dark side of the moon. Suzy was here and she was being real with him. She was even trying to protect him from the slings and arrows of what might come. “Thank you,” he said, his voice small.

“You’re welcome, Dan,” she said. Meaning it. And she added, “be sure to always have something frozen she can chew on. That’ll keep the swelling down.”

Dan smiled. He couldn’t help it. Suzy was just so damn good at being helpful.

He remembered why they were friends again. 

Unfortunately, once she was gone Willow started up again, and he had to endure the foul glares of the people surrounding him as he tried to keep her quiet. His anxiety and tension ramped up. By the time he was back in the car with his screaming daughter, he felt like a frayed string of rope.

He sang. That was how he dealt with anything that troubled him. “Numi numi  
fuckin’ numi 

Shut up!” someone was screaming. Surely it wasn’t his voice, getting louder and higher and more desperate. “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

He didn’t see the pothole in the half-paved highway before him until it was too late. Before he could correct his trajectory the car skidded sideways off the road and came to a stop two inches from a fenceline.

*** 

They were both fine. By some miracle. Hale and healthy. Dan had a bruise on his forehead from where the airbag had deployed and struck him just above the hairline. Willa was untouched, and smiled up at him from her bassinet. 

She was so trusting. He didn’t deserve anything about her miraculous existence. 

He felt like there was led shot in his heart. All he could hear when he let himself time to think and remember, was his own voice screaming at his daughter, telling her to shut up.

He was not a shouter, not a fighter, not even in his more strongly opinionated moments. He’d never been this impatient with Brian’s daughter, with his sister’s babies. Was he so fundamentally flawed as an omega that he couldn’t fulfill his daughter’s basic needs?

Was he this much of a fuck-up?

The next day, Arin brought home a plump British woman, about fifty, with permed hair and a vivacious smile. She called him ‘Mister Mister Hanson’, and could make tea and pancakes that tasted like they’d been beamed to earth from celestial regions. He couldn’t fault her for a single thing. She treated his daughter like gold.

But when she sang A Spoon Full of Sugar, or made Willa laugh just by walking into the room, or whipped up a brunch for him when he came home from the studio feeling like a zombie Dan found himself rooted the ground, desiccated, feeling like he was stewing alive in his own skin.

Arin told him it was for the best – that he was so worked up he needed a break, and that the pregnancy had been so difficult for him that he needed to rest. But Dan felt as if that was all he was doing, staring at the wall and spinning his wheels.

*** 

He shuffled through life. Quieter at Grump sessions than normal. He listened to Brian’s backing tracks with a thin smile and kept circling back to the same themes of loss and failure in his lyrics.

He erased most of them before showing them to Brian. Danny Sexbang was a loser, but not that bad. 

He held his daughter at a distance, plunging a nipple into her mouth, cleaning her bottom, rocking her silently in his arms as she screamed, and teeth began to emerge from her tender gums. He felt like he couldn’t help her, no matter what he tried. And every night Arin would wrap himself around Dan and he’d have to resist the urge to punch his partner in the throat, curl into a ball, cling to the edge of the mattress. Dan loved to be touched. He didn’t understand the dichotomy between his old needs and his new needs. Didn’t understand why he didn’t want to be held and loved as he had back in the old days.

Didn’t know why he wanted to cut off his own skin and run free, far from the world that was imprisoning him.

**** 

It came to a head one sunny Sunday morning. He’d pulled himself out of an empty bed, forced himself through a shower, pulled on a hoodie and sweatpants and headed to his daughter’s nursery.

It was empty.

Terror seized him by the neck and slammed through him like a shot of whiskey. He raced downstairs, screaming Arin’s name, pleading for help.

But help was already there. Downstairs was the nanny. And she was holding Willa in her arms, and singing softly to her while she stirred oatmeal. 

“Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world…”

Dan’s panicked heart was throbbing in his chest – all he could do was rush to them, his arms extended, Willa’s pretty face opening and brightening as she extended her arms.

“Give me my baby!” he seized her from the arms of the nanny.

“Mister Mister Hanson…”

“MY NAME. IS DAN. My name is DAN AVIDAN.” His eyes were wide and his skin felt like it was on fire. “And I’m raising my daughter Jewish!” He and Arin hadn’t talked about that yet – Dan was still nowhere near reconciled to his own faith – but saying the words suddenly gave him great power. If Arin could make choices about their lives than he sure as hell could make a choice about his daughter’s faith.

“I’m sorry.” And she genuinely seemed to be, lips puckered in regret.

“I know,” Dan said. With difficulty, the words came, “But I don’t think this is working out. I’m afraid we don’t need you here.”

“I see,” she said. Her lip remained stiff. “May I borrow your phone and call for a car?”

“Sure.”

“Dan?”

Arin was standing in the doorway, looking as confused as could be, his leather jacket looped over his shoulder. Utterly unchanged. 

“What?”Dan asked. He gently took the nanny’s arm and helped her outside, where he waited for an Uber.

“We should talk about this,” he said, as a car came and stopped for the nanny. Dan quietly helped her in, and until the driver petered off to take her to her house, he stayed quiet. “Why did you do that? You need her around the house and so do I!”

“If you would get off your ass and take care of her half of the time, we wouldn’t need anything.”

“Woah!” Arin said, holding up his hands, “ I have to work, baby – I’m trying my best.”

“Why did you decide to get us a nanny without asking me first?” Dan’s eyes were sharp upon his face. Arin squirmed and averted his eyes. “Arin…”

“Suzy and Barry just got a nanny. I thought that if…”

“I’m not Suzy.”

Arin looked up from the ground, met Dan’s eyes and said, “Huh?”

“I’M NOT SUZY. I’m not going to leave you! I’m not going to find some other fucking alpha who’s going to make my life happier. But I’m DAN. I’m in a band. I had an album in the Billboard top twenty last year. I love the New York Giants and Def Leppard and the taste of sushi and when you wake me up with a kiss and making music is my whole life. And my daughter is JEWISH, and you hired a Catholic nanny who was sitting there singing hymns to her full well knowing that fact….”

“Dan…”

“I am, and I love all of those things and I totally love so many more. And I love you. You’re my lover. And my best friend. I thought you knew that much about me. But when you look at me you just see some kind of replacement for Suzy…”

“I don’t…”

“ARIN. SHUT UP.” Willa thunked her head onto his collarbone, and Dan modulated his voice. “You think we’re in some kind of race with her and Barry and I’m fucking sick of it. I’m me. I’m FUCKING DANNY SEXBANG. And if you can’t recognize that fact I’m a whole different person – that I’m the father of your daughter – then I can’t do this anymore. And I’m not gonna put Willa through it.”

Arin began to cry. But he didn’t say anything, and so Dan quietly cuddled Willa closer to his chest and started to walk.

“Dan! Dan, wait!” but he was running, running until he was panting and his heart was pounding and Arin couldn’t catch up. Freed from his harness and free from the weight of his anger, he felt as if he could fly.

 

*** 

At the foot of the gate that separated their house from the outside world, he stopped to call an Uber. By the time it arrived Willa was cold in spite of Dan’s sparse body heat. He wasn’t thinking about the future – only that there was one place he could go when things were so dangerous. 

When he stopped in front of Brian’s house he rushed inside without paying attention to anything. Rachel answered the door and he fell into her arms.

Dimly, he was aware of Brian taking Willa – that he had bundled her up, carried her inside, fed her, rocked her. Coco was running around Dan’s legs and he petted her head, his mouth going a mile a minute., Brian’s daughter clinging to his knee. Brian made him take a bath, made him change his clothing; he borrowed Brian’s jeans and shirt, but they fit better than the sweats had. Dan was sitting down, and he was talking in circles about the argument, how he couldn’t understand Arin, how he wasn’t going back until Arin apologized.

Suddenly Brian’s voice cut through his mental din. “Why do you keep saying you don’t think you love Willa?”

“Huh?” His eyes went overbright. “No, no I never said that. I love her. What kind of sick bastard wouldn’t love his own daughter?” Tears came to Dan’s eyes instantaneously. They bubbled over and rolled down his face, and he started to sob, hiding his face, curling into a ball. 

“Dan,” murmured Brian, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. Dan rocked and rocked and rocked, his mind filled with agonizing paralysis. His lover might not love him – for certainly he hadn’t said anything to Dan’s declaration of love. His attachment to his daughter ran hot or cold, but never consistently. 

“I’m so scared,” he started to chant. “I’m so scared, I’m so scared, I’m so scared Help me Brian Help Me Brian Help Me HelpMeHelp…”

He didn’t have another conscious realization until they were sitting in the office of his doctor, with Brian’s hand iron-strong on his arm. By then the chanting had stopped, but Dan felt as if he were sitting outside of himself. 

It was a feeling he remembered well.

The words poured out of him in great, murky gulps to his doctor – the depression, the sense of detachment, the fear in him. His panic attack at Brian’s place. The blank white wall of fear that had greeted him. The detachment from his daughter.

They didn’t leave until he had the number to a new therapist, and a bottle of anti-depressants in his hand.

*** 

“I still don’t believe it was just post partum depression,” said Brian. “Why the hell didn’t they check you before they released you?”

They were sitting on Brian’s back patio two months later, with Willow crawling around them like a fat snail, Brian’s daughter scribbling on a bunch of loose leaf paper with a box of bright and fresh crayons. Dan and his daughter had quasi-moved in with the Wechts in an attempt at giving Arin space and giving himself room to figure out his feelings. “I guess my hormone levels weren’t out of whack when Willa was born. It happened later, when my body started to heal from the delivery. That’s what my doc says.” He remembered those months with sadness, but no detachment – not anymore. In the time that had passed He felt better. A lot better. Dan knew his luck with antidepressants had been scattershot but this time they seemed to be working well. He’d have to go to the doctor for a blood test, be weaned back off of those pills – but he felt as liberated now as he had when he’d thrown another bottle into a lake in France.

His phone buzzed and his brow furrowed when he saw Arin’s name and number. They’d been in sparring contact and he’d sent pictures of Willa whenever he could; very occasionally Arin called and tried to explain himself. Dan listened. 

He was trying, too. 

Arin’s voice trembled when the question came from him. “I’m up the street. Can I come in? I’ve been missing Wills so much.”

Dan eyed Brian and shrugged. “Sure. We’re in the back – Rachel’s writing in the living room and she’ll let you in. I’ll see you in a second.” He bit back a ‘love you’, painfully.

Brian’s eyes narrowed at the look on Dan’s face. “I think I’d better go into the garage and hit something heavy for a few minutes,” Brian said. Dan smiled; Brian’s protectiveness during this time had meant more to him than he could say and he’d never be able to express how much every last bit had meant to him. 

“We’ll go out to a movie tonight.”

“Lego Movie Two!” Yelled Brian’s kid. Dan ruffled her hair.

“Ladies choice,” he said agreeably. 

That was when Arin stepped out of the shadows and robbed Dan of his power to think.

He was wearing a blue dress shirt and black pants; he was carrying a large arrangement of jasmine. He scratched the back of his neck, smiling sweetly as Dan picked up their daughter and carried her closer to her father. “These are for you,” he said, extending his hand.

“Oh. Thank you,” Dan said quietly. The flowers stayed firm against his fingertip when he ran his thumb over them, and Willa rubbed her little nose into the fragrant blossoms.

His lover watched the two of them. “Can I hold her?” Arin whispered. 

Dan nodded and very carefully extended his arms, letting Dan pluck their daughter from his arms. “Hi sweetie,” he cooed. “Yeah, it’s just your dad,” he said. Willa’s face showed mild confusion before her point of view orientated itself and she rested her head against his shoulder. “God, she’s totally f- amazingly gorgeous.”

“I know,” Dan said. And she looked wonderful in his arms.

“Dan,” he said, as Dan echoed back Arin’s name. Nervous. “I…messed…everything up,” he said deliberately, his eye on Willa. “I know I did. But I’m willing to go to therapy about this. And I’ll talk to Suzy more. And I’ll stop shoving all of the chores on you and running away. And I’ll spend more time with Wills.”

“Why were you?” Dan asked.

Arin shook his head. “Alpha bullshit. I grew up hearing about how omegas were built to do housework. It was the alpha’s job to take care of everyone. So I got wrapped up in work.”

“Oh,” Dan said flatly.

“And there was some other bullshit going on,” added Arin. “But….I love you. I think I’ve always loved you. Even before, when you were just a guy who knew Ross sitting on my couch, I did.”

Dan smiled, tears in his eyes. “So you like, heard bells when you saw me?”

“Fire engines.” Suddenly Arin’s arms were around him, and they were both crying, protecting Willow between their chests. When they parted, Dan gave Arin a serious, thoughtful look. 

“It’s going to take a lot of work,” Dan said. “Hard work. Are you okay with that?”

“Anything,” Arin promised. “I love you, Dan.”

“Love you, Arin,” Dan said. 

And it felt so good, just to say it.

 

*** 

They were together, on the beach, a month later. Dan had never been one for beaches, for oceans, for swimming. But his daughter loved them, and so he took her.

He was learning a lot about Willa these days. She loved frogs, and apple sauce. She could almost walk, but was an expert crawler. Her favorite toy was a calico stuffed cat that was missing an eye.

Suzy had given it to her.

Things had gotten a little bit easier over time. They were there, with Barry and Suzy and their boys on the beach – a little outing. Arin and Suzy were further up the beach, grilling. Dan noticed that they were actually laughing together. He smiled at the sight of it.

Things would never be easy, and he would never really forgive her, but it was getting better between them. Almost civil.

His doctor said his hormonal balance was almost back to normal. They’d wean him off the anti-depressants slowly over the coming months – no more waterlogged journeys. No more fears, honestly. 

His relationship with Arin was generally stronger now. They were going to counseling together and apart to balance their lives out, to get better at talking about their problems. It was helping. Arin was getting better at taking care of Willow without Dan having to prod him into it, and he had stopped comparing Dan to Suzy. They’d stopped playacting roles and started being Dan and Arin again.

Dan wasn’t back in their shared house, but he supposed he would be soon.

With therapy came the reclamation of his mind, his soul. His skin felt like it belonged to him again. He wasn’t just an omega, wasn’t a body attached to a baby making apparatus. He’d put the Danny Sexbang outfit on for the first time since he’d grown out of it in the middle of his pregnancy that morning, and it looked good. Felt right.

 

She stirred in his arms and he sang quietly, _”Numi, numi, yaldati, Numi, numi nim.  
Numi, numi, k’tanati, Numi, numi nim.”_ No panic. No fear.

She laughed.

What felt even better was his relationship with Willa. Step by step, he’d begun to see her as more of a person. Had come to confirm that he loved her. He could say it without an iota of fear now. 

In the sunlight, they moved up the beach, arm in arm. “C’mon baby. Wanna go swimming?” 

In his arms, Willa let out a little squeak of happiness. Wading carefully into the water, Dan didn’t go beyond his ribcage, just enough to get her wet from toes to belly. She gave him an openly astonished look, as if he’d invented the sea.

Dan laughed and buried his face in her jasmine-scented hair. And in the bright blue bowl of the ocean, they swam.

**Author's Note:**

> Like what you see? There's a lot more at my [Tumblr!](http://devilgate-drive.tumblr.com)


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